Landeier
by deervelvet
Summary: ...They had both been through their fair share of Hell during that time, and if she wanted to hold onto childhood's final gasps at life, who was he to tell her any different? (Human AU/Human names used. Slice-of-life drabbledrama centering on Alpine siblings with eventual cameos from others.)
1. Chapter 1

Basch sighed and settled into the stack of pillows against his headboard, pushing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and pressing until silver stars twinkled in the purple-yellow field of his darkened vision. The roaring throb of blood in his ears began to ebb like seawater retreating from the shoreline, white noise clearing away until all that was left was the silence of his sleepy house and the rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock down the hall. His breathing steadied as the stress melted from his body. He sunk heavier against the soft embrace at his back, forgetting the laptop that slid haphazardly off his lap and onto the mattress. A cool breeze tousled the curtains and touched his cheeks, cooling his heated face and soothing him further.

By the time he heard the footsteps at his doorframe, he'd nearly fallen asleep.

"Sebastian?"

With an almost-snort, he started and sat upright, muscles tensing in surprise. The blurriness of his vision cleared to reveal her slight figure in his doorway backlit by the soft light from the hallway lamp. The way she timidly shrunk against the doorframe, apologetic for having unknowingly woke him, was almost comforting in its familiarity.

"Adi," he confirmed aloud, relaxing and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"I was just getting ready for bed," she informed him, toying with the hem of her too-long sleep shirt and crumpling its soft pink material between her fingers. She smiled a soft smile. "I heard you come in."

His day had begun at five, as always, just ahead of the first light of dawn. A shower too brief to wait for the water to warm up and a second-rate cup of coffee were all he had time for before grabbing his things and darting out the door with his sister in tow. The two hurried on foot as far as they could travel together before the road diverged towards the train station to Basch's job and towards Adi's Fachmittelschule, Basch making sure Adi had lunch and bus money and Adi assuring him that she had plenty left from what he'd given her the day before. Another sprint across town, and a train spirited Basch away on a nearly hour-long ride to his first job – an old auto repair shop in the next canton over. There he worked until noon doing whatever his limited training allowed, namely sweeping and washing windshields and occasionally booking customers. After a hasty lunch break, if there was one at all, he caught a bus to the north side for his classes at the university. Three in a row, and then back on the train in time to walk Adelinde home from her school before hurrying to his evening job working security for some big corporate farm not far from where they lived that had invested tens of thousands of francs in a solar energy project. Finally arriving at home sometime after one in the morning left little time for sleep, especially when there were assignments to be completed, but Basch had learned to make do.

"Sorry," the young man apologized, sounding more tranquil than before. Hand extended, he waited for the girl to cross the room and pull herself onto the mattress beside him. She laid her head against his shoulder and he took in the damp scent of her freshly showered hair. Honey, cherry blossoms and sun-ripened raspberries: the usual sugary sweet preteen bouquet. "Did you have fun at your...?" Basch waved his hand, feeling the air for the right word. Not finding it. "Get-together thing? Party?"

Adelinde nodded, brushing a stray blonde lock behind her ear. "Birgit and Gabi were there."

"Ah," Basch sighed, letting his eyes fall shut. "That must have been nice."

She nodded again and explained, "Gabi showed me a photo of the new dress she's working on. It's very pretty. She bought most beautiful emerald green chiffon for the skirt I've ever seen. She's doing a halter top with an empire waist for the bodice and a handkerchief hem. I'll get a photo for you when she has a little more of it finished!"

The man, who hardly knew burlap from bouclé, just responded with a nod and a gravelly, "It sounds good." He hadn't meant to dismiss her excitement; he was just so ignorant of fashion. And so tired.

Adelinde, ever so slightly embarrassed at her fanatic outburst, mumbled, "Um, how was your day?"

"It was fine, Adi," he replied. "Long."

"Did your professors give you a lot of assignments?" she asked, noting the computer.

She'd always sounded so innocent when she was being inquisitive, Basch thought, with a lasting childlike quality to her despite how much she'd grown both mentally and physically in the past few years. But they had both been through their fair share of Hell during that time, and if she wanted to hold onto childhood's final gasps at life, who was he to tell her any different?

Realizing his tired mind was wandering off-course, he nodded and gave a curt, "Yeah, some."

"Then I should let you sleep."

Before he even had a chance to respond, she was dutifully moving off of his bed, her slender legs stretching to touch the floor. She was so tiny.

"Good night, big brother."

Basch nodded, closed the laptop and slid it away with finality, made to push himself further into the beckoning cocoon of his blankets and replied in turn, "Sleep well, Adelinde."

...

A/N: The names used in this story are Sebastian (Basch/Baschi) Zwingli and Adelinde (Adi) Zwingli.

Translation notes: Fachmittelschule is a type of level-2 secondary school in the Swiss educational system that comes before university/vocational school and comes after level-1 secondary school. If you were comparing it to the US school system, it seems most similar to high school

I don't really have a super solid vision on where this story is heading just quite yet, and it was more intended to explore the interpersonal relationships between some of the characters - and yes, there will definitely be other characters as things progress! Sooo... we'll see!

Thanks for stopping in on this sort of prelude piece of something I've been kicking around for ages!


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh," she breathed in surprise when the creaking of old wooden stairs alerted her to another's presence, pausing from stacking the clean cups onto their mismatched mates to turn to the doorway between the hallway and the kitchen. "Good morning!"

Downstairs, his sister had occupied herself with drying last night's dishes and straining on the tippiest tips of her toes to shelve them. The kitchen, despite the occasionally flickering glow of the fluorescent light, remained dim in the early dawn. Late autumn had settled over the countryside of Thurgau, and with it came daylight's diminished rays and the chill of long nights.

"Morning," the blonde responded, opening his arms for the hug that came next. Just how Adelinde always greeted him. "Are your books together?"

"Yes," she responded, pulling away to return to her task. "Of course."

"Good. And your homework?"

"I finished it last night. There was only one assignment."

Reaching for the package of müesli kept in the cupboard above the stove, Basch continued his routine interrogation. "And breakfast?"

"Ah," she paused, voice taking on a strange, contemplative tone. "Well, I'm not very hungry. I'll just pick something up during my break."

Basch, box of cereal tucked under his arm and carton of milk in hand, shot her what only she would have pegged to be a concerned glance. "Hmm. You sure? This is the third week you've skipped breakfast. Are you not feeling well?"

"No," she was quick to reply with a voice as sweet as the plinking of rolled oats and hazelnuts against the ceramic bowl in her brother's hands, assuaging his fears immediately. "I just haven't been very hungry. Besides, we can go shopping less if I eat less, right?"

Although her quiet little giggle that punctuated the statement affirmed that it had been a joke, the young man's brows knit together in a concerned furrow. "Adelinde, that's no excuse for you not to eat," he scolded gently. "I'm earning enough right now for us to eat four meals a day if we wanted, so don't feel obligated to starve yourself."

"I know. I was only joking. I'm sorry."

Heaving a small, guilty sigh, he nodded. "Just don't forget to buy something at school. I'll give you a few extra francs and you can stop by the bakery on your way."

"Okay," she relented with a smile, and added, "Thank you, big brother. A croissant does sound nice."

"Yeah," he mumbled around a mouthful of grains and dried apples. As an afterthought, he mused, "Mm, I won't be able to walk you home today."

"Overtime again?" his sister queried, her mild voice betraying the slightest soupcon of disappointment, for she did truly enjoy spending time with her big brother.

Basch nodded. "Gilbert tried to take my shift for me, but they want us both there all day."

"Oh, say hello for me!"

"T' who?"

"To Gilbert, of course!" she exclaimed, rolling her big, green eyes in the most innocent display of sass that had ever been seen. Honestly, her brother could be so silly sometimes.

The brother, meanwhile, simply wrinkled his nose and furrowed his visage a bit more deeply than before, lines crinkling his forehead as he rather violently gulped down the bite he'd been chewing. "You know, I'll never understand why you like him so much."

"Don't be like that," Adelinde chuckled, dumping a handful of neatly dried spoons into their proper place. It was necessary that the utensils be stacked neatly with their shallow bowls interlocking and handles aligned, and until they were, she poked and prodded them into place to meet her satisfaction. "You and I both know that you get along with him very well, and he's very fond of you."

Basch scoffed at the joke his sister hadn't known she'd made. " _Fond_ may be too strong of a word."

"Baschi," she tittered this time, waving a spoon at him in a mock scold. "Just eat your müesli and stop being so stubborn!"

Her warning prompted him to check his watch. "Get your coat and your books," he announced before attempting to wolf down the remaining cereal in his bowl, uncomfortable with the idea of wasting such a quantity of perfectly good food. There wouldn't be time for coffee this morning. "We're leaving in two minutes."

The two of them, bundled up against the cold in wool scarves and heavy coats, made their way along the unpaved path that wound through fields of clover and grape vineyards towards the edge of town. Schlattingen was always a quiet village, but this season in particular gave the impression that the area was completely barren of life. In the long days of summer, the golden-blue morning skies were often tinted with the haze of dust kicked up by lumbering tractors, and distant commotion of field workers could be heard. But this time of year, sometime after the last harvest and well into the second week of heavy frosts at night, the mornings were dark and still. Peaceful, but lonely.

The siblings' walk took them past big browning squares of farmland dotted with austere white houses and great steel-and-concrete silos. Dense but small wooded areas seemed sprinkled almost randomly throughout the landscape, the thinning foliage of the branches revealing great flocks of birds perched for their nightly rest, hopefully awaiting the morning to reveal some grains of seed forgotten by the harvesters.

As they walked north, farm gave way to larger patches of forest, and farmhouses became timbered townhouses and wooden chalets. Life was more abundant here, mothers ushering their children down the street to school, businessmen hurrying to their cars and young men and women gathering outside the local café.

"Ah," Basch rumbled, reminded by the scene of two girls, maybe only two years older than Adelinde, cheerfully greeting each other by pressing their plump, wind-reddened cheeks together for a friendly kiss. The young man delved his hand into his pocket, pulling out his wallet and searching it for a few notes to hand to the other. "For breakfast."

"Oh, right," his sister agreed, nodding as she tucked the money into the purse hanging at her hip. "Thank you."

The road widened as they moved further into the center of the village, passing a daycare and the primary school. The intersection just before the train station marked the spot where their routes diverged.

"I'll be home late," he repeated his warning, having stopped and turned to face her. "But I'll see you in the morning." When Basch's current work arrangements had first come into effect, poor Adelinde had for the first several weeks worked herself sick trying to stay awake. After some time, and largely in part to her brother's worried insistence, she adjusted to not telling him goodnight, instead retiring some three hours before he even came home. She was to rest for the both of them, he'd told her. She had always been so agreeable that it really only took minimal coaxing in the end.

"Alright, Sebastian. I'll see you tomorrow, then." She grinned when he patted her head and took a few quick steps towards the high school before stopping in her tracks and wheeling into an about face. "Baschi! I forgot to mention! Remember Gabi's sewing project I told you about a few weeks ago? After the birthday party?"

He nodded; even as tired as he'd been, he'd done his best to be an attentive audience for his excited little sister. "Green dress?"

Adelinde's cheeks plumped up as she smiled. "Yes! She'd like me to come over after school to give my input. Maybe help with the hemline. Is that alright?"

The warning ding! ding! ding! of a train screeching into the station reminded him that he needed to hurry to the platform and board, and so, despite the legitimate objections that came immediately to mind, he offered a rather mumbled, "Just don't forget your homework."

As he turned his back to hurry on, tossing up a hand in a wave goodbye, he heard her declare, "You're the best! I'll be home by ten!"

...

The damp November wind off Lake Bodensee sliced effortlessly through even the coziest of wool coats, and so Basch was spending his lunch break begrudging the thought of emerging from his cocoon of sweater and scarf for the time required to take a bite of his sandwich - which was more than likely frozen by now, too. Instead, hands shoved into his pockets and hood tugged up to keep the wind off the back of his neck, he stared ahead to the point where the grey water turned into a slightly lighter grey sky, a miasmal haze blurring the line between the two. He couldn't quite make out Germany from his spot on the wooden park bench at the water's edge, but Basch assumed that the weather must have been shitty for them, too.

"Is that salami? You're seriously going to waste that?"

Basch turned a wind-chapped face up to the source of the familiarly boisterous voice. "Knock yourself out."

Gilbert just laughed his typical hissing sort of laugh, forcing the air between his teeth to make a sound not unlike some kind of pneumatic device he probably used at the repair shop, and plunked himself uninvited on Basch's bench. And not in any respectable manner, no, but in the typical Gilbertine method of swinging himself over the back of the bench and crashing down in the seat. An overgrown child. "Loving this weather," he declared - or maybe it was supposed to have been a question directed at the younger man.

Basch was never sure; Gilbert was weird.

"I'm sure it's perfect for the clinically insane and the masochistic," Basch replied. Whether Gilbert's exclamation had been an assertion or a question, Basch's response worked.

" _Tch_ ," Gilbert hissed, offended. "Which one do you think I am?" So it had been a declaration after all.

Basch smiled a very faint sort of smile and ribbed, "Weren't you born in East Germany? I would say both."

"Anyway," Gilbert continued, master of rebounding from being lightly insulted, "Overlord-Supervisor wants us back over there in fifteen."

The younger man narrowed his eyes slightly. "I just barely got here. I've only been off for five minutes."

Gilbert shrugged. "I know; most of my break is just going to be walking over here to get you. File a complaint to the labor law people, or be happy with the extra pay you'll get from clocking in early and drop it."

A few quiet moments passed, the calls of waterfowl and the lapping of choppy water against the bank of the lake producing a calming ambiance. The two men shared a rare moment of silence.

"Adi wanted me to tell you hello," Basch murmured.

"Oh man," the older man laughed, his wild platinum hair being tugged by a particularly strong gust, and mused, "I haven't seen her in forever! You should bring her by the shop sometime."

Wrapping his rejected lunch back in the paper in which he'd received it and climbing to his feet, Basch informed Gilbert that, "She's busy with her classes." He paused, sighed, and admitted, "But I'm sure she'll want to come over with Christmas holiday coming up soon." Adi was a gift-giver extraordinaire, and her charity extended from family to friends to acquaintances of acquaintances. She had already begun her gift making rituals, sewing wearable gifts and gathering labor intensive cookie recipes from food blogs and saving small mementos that reminded her of certain people which she would then arrange into some sort of diorama in a jar. She had all the creative genius in the family. Basch mainly stuck to buying a box of cards, all dozen of them exactly alike, scrawling out a brief "happy holidays" inside the two of them he would actually distribute, and putting the rest away to be used for the same two people for the next six Christmases.

The walk back to the shop from Basch's favorite reclusive lunch spot was a short and pleasant one that led the two men along residential streets lazily sloping upwards as they moved away from the lake. The narrow alleys were quiet this time of day with the usual occupants at school and work. Gilbert's loud personality and louder voice eagerly accepted the task of filling in the quiet spaces, his laughs and awful stories of his youthful conquests echoing off the brick apartment buildings and half-timbered houses. They passed by a bait shop along the way, and numerous small storefronts that sold things like stationary and offered locksmithing services.

The roads sloped gently up, away from the water, and as the pair ascended, the streets widened into proper roads, and traffic became heavier. Small businesses turned into gas stations and franchise convenience stores. Gilbert waved to someone in a passing car as they waited to cross the street. Gilbert knew almost everyone in St. Gallen - or so it seemed. In fact, it seemed that Gilbert knew someone in every village and every city of every canton, and that was just Switzerland. From the way the older man told it, Berlin and everything around it was his old stomping grounds, and he was some kind of legend there.

And at the same time, this _was_ Gilbert, the man who claimed to hold the world record in everything imaginable, and whose stories grew more and more grandiose with each retelling.

"I had six girlfriends at once back in '98," Gilbert was saying now.

Basch did some quick calculations in his head. His coworker's age had always been an amorphous thing to him; the man looked 16 going on 60, and Basch could never quite place him in any given decade to his satisfaction. Every so often, Gilbert would say some slang word, some phrase that harkened back to a specific era, and Basch would begin figuring it up. The average of his guesses led him somewhere just shy of 40 - maybe 37 or 38 - but he'd pondered as young as 29 once, and as old as 45.

In the end, Basch had decided Gilbert was some ageless deity who could be his father just as easily as he could be his brother, and his immaturity transcended his body anyhow.

"Did you, now?" Basch indulged, cold hands shoved into his pockets. Gilbert had gladly accepted the remains of his young coworker's neglected sandwich, and Basch's hands were freed to be kept warm.

"Six," Gilbert reiterated around a mouthful of food. "Janina, Emma, Wiebke, Magdalene…" Here Gilbert paused, four fingers held up mid-count and looking as if he was working hard to remember. "Ilse," he sounded out, almost as if testing the feel. Basch saw him nod to himself, so it must have been right. "Ehm…" Gilbert paused to think again. "Karla? Karola? Something like that."

"I take it Karla-Karola wasn't your favorite," Basch mused. Their shop was just a block down the street now.

"She had this braid that she never took down," Gilbert explained, gesturing with his hands to simulate said braid. "I mean _never_. Not even when it was half-fallen and totally matted. I saw a leaf in it once. It was there for a week. I finally told her, and she said she wouldn't undo it to get the leaf out because it was the most perfect braid she'd ever done, or something. I broke up with her after that. The others were nice, though."

Basch eyed the man warily. Gilbert was weird enough to have a girlfriend with a braid obsession, sure, but five other, perfectly normal girlfriends? Basch didn't see it.

…

The rest of the day passed without incident, but it was still long and still busy. As soon as Basch and Gilbert arrived back at the shop, their boss, Erzsébet, doled out marching orders and sent them to task. She was a no-nonsense woman who ran a tight ship, but the payoff was good in that a tight ship often attracts many customers, their small auto repair store being no exception. Many customers meant good wages.

By the time the last customer was through and the last lugnut bolted into place, Basch was nearly asleep on his feet, streaked in auto grease and half frozen. Nevertheless, there were still classes to be taken, and still his night job to attend. He looked again at his watch. Adi would be heading home from school soon. The walk home would take about half an hour, and then she'd have dinner and-

No, that wasn't right. Usually so, yes, but not tonight. Tonight, Adi was going to her friend's house. Gabi, was it? To see a green dress. Basch thought for a moment, then took out his phone and scrolled through the contacts. He didn't have any Gabis in his phone. He wondered if he had her parents' information, but realized he didn't know Gabi's family name. There was a Mikkel Auer he didn't recognize; it could have been Gabi's father. There was a G. Lapointe. Could that have been her? But Lapointe was French, and Basch wasn't sure his sister had any francophone friends.

Fighting off a nagging sense of concern, Basch tucked the phone into his pocket and made for the back room where he kept his personal belongings stashed. Adi was an intelligent, resourceful, mature girl; if she needed anything, she'd just call him directly. It was fine that he didn't have Gabi's family's contact information. It was fine.

When his first job didn't run late, Basch usually stopped at a cafe before his university classes for dinner. Tonight, he made do with half a BiFi Roll from the vending machine in the student lounge. The other half he wrapped up and shoved in his bag for later that night. He was hungry now, but if he ate it all, he'd be hungry later with nothing to snack on. Being hungry did make it harder to concentrate on his classes. Even the most dedicated students found organic chemistry difficult to enjoy when their energy levels weren't running on empty - let alone when they were, and Basch counted himself among them. But he did make it through all four grueling hours of evening classes - including a lab session - without falling asleep, took decently legible notes, and even made it to the train on time for his night job.

Basch's night job was fairly unremarkable; he worked alone, patrolling the perimeter of the solar panel field in a golf cart outfitted with a floodlight, equipped with a walkie-talkie and a whistle. He carried a personal can of mace for protection, but that was the extent of his weaponry. No additional firepower was ever needed; no one bothered this place. All the workers had gone home, and it was too remote to be attractive to most of the hoodlum kids from town. It was lonely, and the quiet of night made it difficult to stay awake, but he was only on shift for a few hours before a relief worker came to take over. And the work did give him plenty of opportunity to see the stars, clearly visible here in the countryside when the skies weren't cloudy.

Tonight, as it had been all day, was cloudy. Basch ate stale vending machine sausage roll and fought off the burning graininess in his eyes that begged him to sleep as the overcast sky spit drizzles over the land.

By the time Basch arrived home, having hailed a ride sharing service in the hours after yesterday's last train run and before today's first as always, he was a zombie. He stumbled into the house, taking care to ensure that he locked up, and made a beeline for his bed upon which he flopped without taking the time to peel out of his clothes. Four hours of sleep. He'd only get four hours tonight. It wasn't enough. It hadn't been enough in years.

The thought occurred to him that he should go and check on Adi. He hadn't heard from her, and their family system was that no news was good news, but he should go and check all the same. But his body was sore and tired, and his brain was cloudy as the November skies, and he just needed to close his eyes for a minute.

She'd be fine for a minute.

It was just for a minute, and then he'd check.

Just a minute….

* * *

 **A/N:**

Human names used for this story are Sebastian (Basch/Baschi) Zwingli, Adelinde (Adi) Zwingli, Gilbert Beilschmidt, and Erzsébet Héderváry.

Switz, babe, you gotta eat your sandwich. Well, as long as someone eats it so it doesn't go to waste, I guess... Also, you can never close your eyes just for a minute. Everyone knows this.


End file.
